Herbert Flemming

Herbert Flemming, German engineer and university professor for wood technology and fiber material technology

Herbert Flemming (born February 6, 1903 in Globenstein in the Erzgebirge , † November 3, 1966 in Dresden ) was a German engineer and university lecturer for wood technology and fiber material technology .

Life

Herbert Flemming was born on February 6, 1903 in Globenstein in the Ore Mountains. After attending school with a high school diploma in Bautzen , he devoted himself from 1921 to 1926 at the Technical University of Dresden ( TH Dresden ) to studying mechanical engineering with a special focus on wood technology and paper technology. His teachers were Ewald Sachsenberg , Edwin Meister and Alois Herzog . In 1926 he graduated there on the subject of "Investigating the cutting quality of circular saw cuts". From 1930 he worked in his parents' company Carl Ludwig Flemming Holzwarenfabrik in Globenstein, where he made experiments on circular saws, developed folding furniture and the company logo that is still used today.

In 1934 Flemming received his doctorate at the TH Dresden with the thesis "Contribution to the determination of surface quality" under Edwin Meister at the Institute for Paper Technology. The work goes back to cutting quality tests on wood, which Herbert Flemming carried out for his chair at the suggestion of Ewald Sachsenberg. From 1934 to 1939 he then worked as a safety engineer at the Saxon and North German timber trade association. On this occasion he got to know over 1000 wood processing companies and thus gained an overview of the diversity of wood technology.

Further responsible activities in industry and business followed until Flemming was appointed to the chair for mechanical wood technology in the Faculty of Forestry at the TH Dresden in Tharandt in 1951 to take up the open professorship for mechanical wood technology. In 1952 he was additionally appointed director of the newly founded Institute for Wood Technology and Fiber Building Materials (IHF) in Dresden, today's Institute for Wood Technology Dresden non-profit GmbH (IHD), and in 1954 he was appointed full professor with a chair in Tharandt.

On April 1, 1955, the chair for mechanical wood technology was founded at the Faculty of Technology at the TH Dresden , and Flemming was entrusted with its management. On his initiative, it was possible for the first time in Germany to start training qualified engineers for the wood industry. His appointment as full professor with a chair for wood and fiber materials technology at the Faculty of Technology of the TH Dresden took place in 1960, and at the same time he became director of the newly founded institute for wood and fiber materials technology. In 1963, on Flemming's initiative, the wood and fiber material technology department was merged with the plastic processing department to form the Institute for Wood and Plastic Technology, of which he was director until his death. In order to be able to devote himself more to his duties at the university, in 1965 he handed over the management of what was then the Central Institute for Wood Technology to Günter Langendorf, his previous deputy.

On November 3rd, 1966 Herbert Flemming died unexpectedly shortly after the 3rd Scientific-Technical Conference “Wood Technology” of the Chamber of Technology of the GDR, which he had largely prepared and which was in his hands.

Flemming was married to Hanna Flemming (née Frotscher) and had three children.

Merits

In addition to his successful efforts to scientifically penetrate the field of wood technology, his main focus was the creation of wood-analogous materials, including a. to counter the disproportion between wood supply and demand at the time. One result of these efforts were the new materials Glagit ( composite material made of plaster of paris and glass fibers), Glakresit (composite material made of glass fibers and phenol-formaldehyde resin ) and Neptunit (asbestos-based fire protection board), which were successfully used in construction, mechanical engineering and shipbuilding. Among other things for the Glakresit development he received the award of Honored Technician of the People in 1953 .

Even back then, Flemming was concerned with the sensible combination of wood with plastic (e.g. medium-density fibreboard with Meladur coating) and the structure of macromolecular substances.

Research into substitutes for asbestos fibers and asbestos-free building materials began as early as the 1950s. The results were ahead of their time - they were not taken up again until the 1970s.

In addition to his honorary work in many scientific committees, e.g. B. as chairman of the central working group wood technology at the State Secretariat for Research and Development of the GDR, as board member of the professional association wood / paper / polygraphy as well as chairman of the technical committee of the chamber of technology of the GDR, his commitment to the trade journal "wood technology" must be mentioned which he launched in 1960 and whose development was his special focus.

Flemming always advocated method-oriented student training on the basis of solid mathematical, scientific and technical basic knowledge and always saw basic research on structure-property relationships as the basis for applied and industrial research (so-called Flemming's way ). He always tried to incorporate current research results into the course content and to allow scientific contexts to be viewed in a complex manner. One of his greatest achievements was the decisive contribution to shaping wood research in what was then the GDR and, with the establishment of the chair, the creation of the foundation for successful and ongoing training of engineers for wood and fiber materials technology at the TU Dresden , which today is well over half a century Century.

Herbert Flemming Prize

In memory of Herbert Flemming, the Association of Academic Wood Engineers at the TU Dresden e. V. (VAH) awards the Herbert Flemming Prize, endowed with € 1,500, for outstanding student work every two years. The work should be in connection with today's chair for wood technology and fiber material technology at the former institute for wood and paper technology and now at the institute for natural materials technology of the TU Dresden.

swell

• Prof. Dr.-Ing. Herbert Flemming †. In: Wood as a raw material. Volume 25, No. 2, 1967, pp. 75-77.
• Obituary for Prof. Dr.-Ing. H. Flemming. In: wood technology. Volume 7, No. 4, 1966, pp. 282-284.
• D. Heyne, E. Weinel: In memoriam Prof. Dr.-Ing. Herbert Flemming. In: Scientific journal of the TU Dresden. Volume 16, No. 3, 1967, pp. 967-969.
• E. Schuster: Chronicle of the Tharandt forestry teaching and research facility 1811–2000. (= Tharandt's Forest Science Articles. Supplement 2). 2nd, expanded edition. Tharandt 2002, OCLC 53427434 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dieter Flemming, Frank Flemming: 150 years of wood products from Globenstein: History and stories of an Erzgebirge enterprise. 2014, DNB 1058831267 , p. 34.
2. ↑ http://katalog.ub.uni-weimar.de/tgl/TGL_28706-04_12-1973.pdf TGL 28706-04-12-1973, p. 5.
3. ↑ Trade names plastics, p. 3.
4. ↑ TGL 29312 (fire protection panels) ( Memento from January 21, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
5. ↑ Wolfgang E. Höper: Asbestos in the modern age. Waxmann Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8309-2048-9 , p. 215.
6. ↑ http://www.holztechnologie.de/ Website of the specialist journal Holztechnologie
7. ↑ http://holztechnik-studium.de/ TUD Advertising for wood technology studies
8. ^ Association of academic wood engineers
9. ↑ Call for applications - VAH Dresden | Association of Academic Wood Engineers at the Technical University of Dresden V. Accessed April 12, 2018 . 
10. ^ Herbert Flemming Prize 2016